Authored: October 29, 2020

The wind plays with specks of dust along a worn footpath. A mournful sound between branches and leaves. Those leaves that one-by-one fall to the ground dead. The planet is dying, early in its lifecycle, but dying, nonetheless. The once mottled green, white and blue from space is transformed into hues of clotted brown, grey and rusty red. Terrible storms form in the ocean, powered by fallout. Blizzards of radiation flow across parched ground and acid rain falls on both structure and plant life. Animal bones picked dry by vultures and the acid rain.

Somewhere we became strangers, under stars full of promise. A tapestry that became our quilt-cover. Hearing cries as slowly billions turned to millions then thousands turned to hundreds. I think if anyone writes our story, I hope those who read it, learns our lesson.

Thunder rolls in the distance, a churning anger full of weaving turbulence. Acid rain falls again, falls again, falls again. The hundreds turn into mere dozens and those dozens become one. One human, left. Extinction is not a small ending, but the end of a hope. Evolution mourns one of its own.

We became strangers to one another. And at the end, this endling, looked up one last time at the stars. Alone under a moonlit river. And she cried. On a near lifeless planet, she would be one species ending of a many. Ghosts of strangers would roam the land, and this planet would be the tomb.

We charted this course.